Support Toni's Top Surgery

My name is Alex, and this is my dear, dear friend Toni – I am raising money to go towards their top surgery in the middle of May, 2025, especially financial support for their recuperation, rest, and recovery after the surgery. I ask for your generous support to this essential gender- and life-affirming surgery for Toni, who over the years have contributed so, so very much to the trans and crip community in Amsterdam and beyond. It's time we all show some coin gratitude.

Here's the long(er) story:

After contracting COVID in the autumn 2023 and getting diagnosed with chronic long COVID complications in March 2024, Toni has been unable to work and study at the level, which is expected in a market economy. Even at a time, when Toni could only perform one or two hours of labor in a day due to their pain, they have insisted on making spaces and sharing knowledge for system change. From their sickbed, they've contributed with research, knowledge dissemination, legal advice, and analyses of the intersections between mask bans, censorship of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and police violence. As they acquired a wheelchair, they continued tending to the rooftop garden at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam, nurturing this joyful and increasingly beautiful place of manual reflections on our stressed ecology, need for rest, and bodies in climate collapse.

Throughout their long COVID complications, Toni has played a bureaucratic hide-and-seek with their health insurance. They were first promised financial assistance to buy an electric wheelchair, which is critical for their mobility–but then denied financial assistance, when they bought the wheelchair. In all of their encounters with the health care system, Toni has experienced doubt, distrust, and medical gaslighting, partly because of their visible gender queerness.

It is for these reasons that I reach out to our community.

Facing this gender- and life-affirming top surgery, which has been Toni's hope and desire for as long as I've known them, carries with it significant risk. Toni's chronic pain and stressed immune system risks complicating the surgery as well as the recovery. We can reduce this risk, if Toni can dedicate time to recovery.

But time in this economy is expensive.

Toni has partly funded the surgery itself, so I am asking for contributions towards their transport to and from the hospital, as well as their rent, food, post-op consultations, and any unexpected adaptations that may be required for them in their months of recovery. Any and all contributions are welcome.

Please don't hesitate to reach out with questions,

with much gratitude, from me and Toni <3

xx, Alex